The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [452]
After careful consideration the Biological Survey recommended that Flattery Rocks quickly be declared a federal bird reservation; Roosevelt agreed. On October 23, 1907, he signed an Executive Order to that effect. And the Roosevelt administration took its environmental responsibility even farther. On the same day, Roosevelt declared Quillayute Needles (consisting of Hand Rock, Carroll Islets, Bald Island, Jagged Islet, Cake Rock, James Island, Hunting Rock, Quillayute Needles, Rounded Islet, Alexander Island, Perkins Reef, North Rock, Middle Rock, Abbey Island, and South Rock) a federal bird reservation. Then he did the same on behalf of Copalis Rock, unsurveyed rock islands with seabirds, hauling seals, and sea otters. The pelt hunters, fishing organizations, plumers, pot hunters, weekend poachers, oil drillers, and corporate despoilers had been shut down by the federal government along the coast from Seattle to Portland at environmentally sensitive locales. More than any other president, Roosevelt used executive orders without consulting Congress. There was no reason for Washington state to be immune from them. “Roosevelt had the sense to keep wild places in Washington wild,” Kevin Ryan of the state’s Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Complex has noted. “The shear rocks are too hard for people to climb, so all three Roosevelt reserves have become species indicator zones.”27
Roosevelt had grabbed land for the Biological Survey and saved the most enchanting part of Washington state coast for future generations. He said that his own great-grandchildren would someday get to smell Washington’s salty breeze, see the surf-carved ocean rocks, feel the riptide at the roiled straits, and marvel at God’s creation without the stink of gasoline. In Washington state they would be able to see mountains at the ocean’s edge with primeval coniferous forests untouched by axes. They would hear the long-drawn call of loons or watch kittiwakes build nests. By boat, they could encounter pristine islands along the international boundary with Canada. They would be able to imagine what Flattery Rocks, Quillayute Needles, and Copalis Rock had been like during the long-gone days when Captain James Cook stumbled on them and Indians built stockade villages at the foot of the towering ocean rocks and searched for lobsters, oysters, crabs, and fish. Over half of America’s Pacific coast bird species used these Washington state offshore island rocks, and so the Roosevelt administration shut them off from human encroachment.
Today all three of these national wildlife refuges—Copalis, Flattery Rocks, and Quillayute Needles—work together as the Washington Maritime NWR Complex. Under Roosevelt’s executive orders, these islands remain closed to the public—they belong to the seabirds and seals. As Roy Crandall, director of publicity for the Pan American Exposition, wrote in a 1909 edition of Technical World Magazine, President Roosevelt (and the Audubon societies)* single-handedly saved “the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California in the Pacific.” Owing to Roosevelt’s foresight “thousands of protected birds now swarm and multiply in safety and in confidence for they are becoming so tame that bird wardens walk among them and brush them from their paths.”28
III
Once Finley had persuaded the Roosevelt administration to save bird rookeries in Oregon and Washington, he turned his lobbying efforts to wetlands known for their waterfowl: the marshes of Klamath, Tule, and Malheur (which means “misfortune” in French; the name was given after Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson Bay Company was robbed of his furs there in 1826).29 Finley and Bohlman camped for over a month in the marshes of Lower Klamath Lake on the border of Oregon and California during